this post was submitted on 27 Mar 2025
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I had a similar progression myself when I was in my teens, maybe even early 20s.
The basic principle of libertarianism is appealing: mind your own damn business and I'll mind mine. And I still agree with that in general — it's just that a single generality does not make a complete worldview. It took me a while to realize how common it is for self-identifying libertarians to lack any capacity for nuance. The natural extreme of "libertarianism" is just anarchy and feudalism.
In a sane world, I might still call myself a libertarian. In a sane world, that might mean letting people live their own damn lives, not throwing them to the wolves (or more literally, bears ) and dismantling the government entirely.
I'm all for minding my own business, but I also acknowledge that maintaining a functional society is everybody's business (as much as I occasionally wish I could opt out and go live in a cave).
One problem with libertarianism and the other selfish philosophies is that humanity absolutely cannot survive at all without a massive amount of cooperation.
Assholes who think they can do it on their own are completely delusional.
If you eliminate everything from your life that required the cooperation of another human being, it's likely you're naked, starving, and freezing to death.
"Oh, I can hunt for food.'
Really? With just your bare hands? Maybe your naked ass will get lucky and nail a squirrel with a rock, but what are you going to do when a mountain lion decides you're the squirrel?
Even if you manage to make some rock tools and weapons, you didn't figure that out on your own. Someone told you about it.
Knowledge is the biggest advantage humans have going for them. Without sharing knowledge that others discovered, most people wouldn't last long enough to matter.
Too damn right. Community is what makes humans strong. Eventually from those communities we form institutions which build nations, which may even build empires and coalitions.
A human alone is just potential food for something else.
The core political belief I hold is that so long as you are not directly harming someone else, you should be free to do that. That said, I have a lot built up on that.
I do not extend it to corporations or government. I believe that regulation is undoubtedly necessary for a functioning society.
And with laws, nuance is in everything. Nothing is ever so black and white to have a zero tolerance policy.
The perverse ideas that money is speech and corporations are people can make a lot of simple common-sense statements suddenly completely insane.
I support free speech. Money is not speech.
I support personal freedom. Corporations are not people.
Why limit it to direct harm? There's tons of easily avoidable ways to indirectly cause harm. The most obvious to me are about our natural world: taking anything in an unsustainable way deprives others of opportunity, up to and including their ability to feed themself. Reckless hunting or fishing, poisoning water with agriculture runoff, introducing invasive species for personal gain or through negligence, even just cutting down all the trees around you can have loads of consequences with the impact to animal habitat and increased soil erosion.
Indirect becomes nebulous. At what degree of indirect harm do we set that limit. Almost every action we do may cause indirect harm to others. It might be better phrases as "physically" harms someone. I don't want to get into someone doing something to themselves like taking drugs and restrict it solely on the basis that it will hurt their family and friends to see what happens to them.
I use it as the core base of my beliefs, but that doesn't mean I don't think that freedom divests them of any responsibility for their indirect actions. It's the default position until something convinces me why it should be restricted or outlawed.
I also limit it to individuals working alone. Once they work in groups and organize the damage that can be done is different. Or doing it for commercial reasons. I believe private businesses can only exist under strict regulation.
My indirect harm litmus test would fall along the lines of like an OSHA style philosophy of regulation, for example for any kind of ledges we generally require rigid hand railings. If someone got hurt falling off a ledge at my workplace sure I didn't do anything to cause it, but I'd still be on the hook for their injury because I didn't take the required steps to reasonably prevent unnecessary injury.
The problem is obviously that nobody lives in isolation. Everyone takes actions which impact other people.
If there are going to be laws, then the government needs a police force and a judiciary that are big enough to enforce those laws. If there are going to be companies, the government has to be bigger than the biggest company, otherwise it won't be able to effectively enforce anything. The bigger the biggest company gets, the bigger the government has to be in order to be able to enforce the laws. But, big government is antithetical to the libertarian philosophy. If you want to limit the size of the government but still want government to be able to enforce laws, you need to limit the size of companies. But that's a regulation, and government regulations are antithetical to the ideas of libertarianism.
Arguing for the idea that the government should generally let people mind their own business as long as nobody is getting hurt, or that consenting adults are knowingly and willingly consenting to being hurt, that's fine. Same with the idea that regulations shouldn't be overly burdensome. There's always going to have to be a line drawn somewhere, but it's fine if you tend to want that line to be drawn in a way that allows for more freedom vs. more babysitting by the government.
The ridiculous bit is when libertarians try to argue that some extreme form of libertarianism is possible. Anarchy is certainly possible, but it isn't something that most people, even libertarians, think is a great plan.
The extreme forms of Libertarianism or Anarchy are only possible if everyone engages in good faith. They have no built-in protections against bad actors. Someone wants to divert a river for any reason? Sucks to be downstream.
Anarchism can. Anarchism is not the stupid "no rules" thing the media portrays. It's a lack of hierarchy, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have government, rules, and protections. In fact, I think any Anarchist would agree they're required or else people can be exploited and lose their freedom, or things like your example can happen. We should just do it in a more cooperative form, not with a ruling class making the rules for us peasants.
How can rules be enforced without a heirarchy of privilege? What stops someone from saying "I don't consent to being told what to do"?
People can cooperate without the need for a hierarchy. They can agree that some actions are bad and to punish people without an elite doing so.
If you want to learn more, there are tons of resources. Here's a few:
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/john-r-what-is-anarchism
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/the-anarchist-faq-editorial-collective-an-anarchist-faq-full
https://anarchistfaq.org/afaq/index.html
You don't need an "elite" for there to be a heirarchy. I know what anarchism is I just disagree that it's an effective ideology for post-industrial humanity. The world is too complex, our choices have too many consequences, for individuals to make good decisions without ceding some responsibility of knowledge to specialists. This means regulatory bodies, lobbyists, and ideally a democratic means of appointing people to these bodies without being at the short-sighted whims of whoever is suddenly mad that they aren't allowed to fill in a bunch of marshes to build a commune.
I don't think heirarchy intrinsically means class divide, which is the part I see as important. Full disclosure: I most identify with authoritarian-leftism with sympathies to anarchism as a utopian ideal. My education in ecology taught me that people are not to be trusted without strong regulatory agencies, as much as I'd like to believe that individuals generally want to do right.
Yeah, someone has to be. That's what a hierarchy is. Someone is above others and has control. That's basically the definition.
This does not rule out Anarchism.
To go back to this:
I'm not so sure. It can be a vast number of things. It does not mean no rules, no government, no regulations, or whatever else. In fact, I would argue those are essential to some degree or it'd be gone in an instant.
Government is heirarchy, it is the step of organization beyond a cooperative where people are making decisions in lieu of the whole. An elected representative has de facto authority. If someone can opt out of being governed in this way then there are no rules, just suggestions.
It is not. It can be, but it is not a fundamental aspect of it.
Sure. Not in opposition to Anarchism.
I recommend you visit the links above. You should be able to find the answers to your issues. For this case, this addresses some of it:
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/the-anarchist-faq-editorial-collective-an-anarchist-faq-full#text-amuse-label-seca211
Alright, I'm at an actual computer now so I'm to go through bit by bit and you can tell me where my apparent misunderstanding is.
Your sources do a lot of dancing to avoid defining their principle ideas, and mutual understanding of concepts is integral to constructive discourse, so I'm going to do my best here: Anarchy opposes coercion, authority, and hierarchy, particularly that which comes from a state.
Right away we have problems. The concept of free-association does mean there are no rules or protections. Not real ones anyway. Rules and regulations require an enforcement authority or else they are merely suggestions. You are free to make a rule and someone else is free to ignore it. What gives you the right to enforce your rule?
If something does grant you the right or ability then that thing, whatever it is, is a hierarchy of power.
Government is a tricky thing to nail down because it covers a wide range of scales and intents. At its most basic the idea of governance is the codification and/or centralization of rules and processes. This can be the bylaws of a small cooperative or the many branches and layers of a nation. The single common thread is that the body exists to do something in lieu of or at the behest of a greater population, it is an alternative to direct democracy. This means that the government body has the authority, granted or taken, to represent its constituents.
Compare this with a think-tank, where the group exists to make recommendations but has no power to create policy or enforce on their own. This is not a government.
Yes, this is what I mean when I said "Anarchy [is] only possible if everyone engages in good faith.
So they grant themselves the right to enforce their will on others, and you say this isn't "authority"? This not a hierarchy of power, an organized group coercing behavior through violence? What of the consent of the governed?
I like the ideals, and I support them inasmuch as this kind of cooperative and stateless utopia is the theoretical goal of classic Marxist Communism, but this freedom requires a much higher level of trust and knowledge than I think humanity is capable of. Opposing all forms of authority now, when we're facing the existential threats of climate change and broad resource mismanagement, is a mistake. Now we need people with the means to reverse course, with the power to enforce policy, and with the speed and focus to work before it's too late.
No they don't. It's just a very broad political viewpoint with a ton a varied opinions within it. No two anarchists will believe the same thing, and that's true for all political beliefs, which is why they're all like this and hard to define specifically.
Mutual cooperation and direct democracy are ways to come up with agreed upon rules. Not everyone will agree with all of them, but it will be agreed that the majority want something. There will still be a need for enforcement, yes. That doesn't require a hierarchy. Everyone will be equal in voting and equal in how it's enforced.
No, because everyone will be equal in its creation and decisions. A flat plane is not a hierarchy.
No. People who don't engage in good faith will be removed by the cooperation of everyone else. Just like the" Paradox of tolerance" is not a Paradox, because it's based on a social contract and breaking it means you're no longer protected by it. The same applies here. If you break the social contract then punishment must be applied.
You are coming to this conversation with prior assumptions, not an open mind. I'm not an expert on Anarchism, but there is plenty of information out there that can answer your questions better than I can. I would recommend being open to the idea that your beliefs of what Anarchism are are wrong or what's the point?
Then my interpretation is as valid as yours.
This process creates a hierarchy, a majority in-group that gets their way and a minority out-group that does not.
And a rich man is equally not allowed to steal bread or sleep under a bridge. Starting from a level playing field does not mean that things remain equal through the process.
If it only works by removing people you disagree with then it requires buy-in, you're just removing everyone who isn't engaging in good faith so you don't have to count them. This does not refute my initial claim. There is nothing intrinsic to anarchism that defends against bad-faith actors from hijacking the process, there are no checks against greedy thugs with lots of friends.
I went through this half a lifetime ago and ultimately decided anarchism didn't make sense to me. I think something akin to a Leninist vanguard party is a necessary evil, and I think some kind of rigid law-and-order structure will always be necessary.
If I wasn't open to it I wouldn't have gotten this far. I think you're earnest even if I disagree with some of your assertions and I'm sorry that I'm sometimes a dick. It's rare that someone outside the big three lefty domains will engage like this.
To use a real world example of anarchism in action, shopping carts in a parking lot. I'm doubtful anyone has said "you have to return your shopping cart to a cart return" but the generally people do return their shopping carts. There's also people in vests that come around and clean up the parking lot of loose shopping carts. Sometimes people might offer to pass off a cart they just finished using to someone else, or maybe even snag and extra errant cart on their way to cart return. There's no heirarchy, no authority on high dictating the rules, just people doing their thing and generally following the rules but there is someone who is paid to make sure things get cleaned up when the inevitability of stupidity happens.
You might consider Anarchism ironically. It's leftist libertarian basically, and is not "no government." It's about removing hierarchy, which destroys freedoms of people.
I used to call myself a Libertarian too, and I eventually ended up on Anarchism.
Thanks for the link. I'm not up on the latest in anarchist philosophy. The last meaningful work I read on the topic was probably In Defense of Anarchism by Robert Paul Wolff.